PMDF System Manager's Guide


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3.5.1 Forwarding Mail for Selected Users

To forward mail for a few selected users, use the alias file. If, however, you will be doing this for several thousand users, then use the alias database. The difference between the two is that the alias file is loaded into memory while the alias database, intended for large numbers of aliases, is not. The alias database is a keyed, indexed file and has excellent performance even when it contains over a hundred thousand aliases.
On OpenVMS systems, the database is an RMS keyed, indexed file, and may be tuned with RMS tuning tools, if necessary.

Suppose you want to forward mail for the two local users Judy.Public and jdoe to, respectively, pjudy@vaxa.example.com and johndoe%a1@mr.xyzzy.org. To do this with the alias file you would simply add to the PMDF alias file, the two entries


Judy.Public:       pjudy@vaxa.example.com 
jdoe:              johndoe%a1@mr.xyzzy.org 
If you are using a compiled configuration, then be sure to recompile (and on OpenVMS reinstall) it after making this change.

To add these two entries to your alias database you should locate the source file used to generate that database, add these two entries to that file, and then regenerate the database with the PMDF CRDB (OpenVMS) or pmdf crdb (UNIX and NT) utility. There is no need to recompile your configuration after making changes to the alias database. However, resident servers (such as the PMDF SMTP server) may need to be restarted if you want them to see the change immediately.

On OpenVMS or UNIX systems, you may instead add these entries to the alias database using the PMDF DB (OpenVMS) or pmdf db (UNIX) utility. See the appropriate edition of the PMDF User's Guide for more details.

There are several points that you should note:


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